The roar of the engine submerged the sounds of the problems in her head. She leaned forward and pushed. A tin can was swallowed up and crunched by the engine. She gasped and pulled the throttle of the lawn mower. The scrunched tin remains lay underneath it among the damp green clumps of grass.
Up and down and around, forming a large square, a rectangle, smaller squares, a triangle, until all of the waving green grass was clipped. Sticks, last autumn's leaves were devoured in its midst. The snows had come suddenly before she'd had time to finish last season's raking.
Exhausted, she leaned forward, uphill, downhill, pushing, pulling, turning. Her mother came outside with a glass of water. The glass of water she was dreaming about, but would not stop for a minute to go get it. Here it was!
"There's lemon in it. Lemon-water," her mother said. She sat down and sipped on the patio. Her mother grabbed the handlebars of the lawnmower and smiled like a little kid. In her socks, she proceeded to mow a small portion of the lawn left unfinished. Debbie rose from the picnic table.
"I want to watch the motorcycle races," her mother said.
Finally finished, Debbie lowered the throttle and the engine sputtered and stopped. She wished she were still mowing. She reluctantly returned to the inside of the house, leaving the green grass, contrasting with the dull gray bark of the trees.
Phones, confusion, obligations. But inside her room, Debbie felt nothing but sorrow. Her cat's sudden death over the winter made her feel raw. In place of the commotion, she felt a deep, longing, strange sorrow. Sorrow. The cold January wind had swirled cleanly over the frozen snow. The cat was not coming back.
Spring's soft breeze brought along with it a haunting sound. A cat bird meowed, unseen. The air was cold with melancholy.
On the following morning, Debbie stared at the flower garden. She recalled the family cat who she called simply "Meow Meow" as she used to stroll through the garden, her garden. On the day after her death, Debbie had burst into tears behind the counter of the bank where she worked as a temporary teller. The bank was closing and they needed her for six months.
"Was she sick? Was something wrong?" Elizabeth tried to comfort her. Betty escorted her, showered with confusion, from the counters to the break room. "I used to breed dogs and lose them. I know how it feels," the usually bossy supervisor consoled her. Debbie looked at her as if to ask, What do I do now? Betty looked at her with pursed lips and sadness in her eyes and shook her head, unable to comfort Debbie.
Who would mow the lawns while she was gone? Why was she doing this? How could she leave home again after a year and a half of living back at home and helping her parents with the family business? She looked at the daffodils one las ttime, knowing there would be no more time to work in the garden. I shouldn't be doing this, she thought. I should have presented my parents with a baby boy by now, dressed in pale blue and white, someone to lift high over their heads and coddle.
At the breakfast table, she held up her cereal bowl. The bird, Nipper had been let out of his cage and was now approaching her. He stood on the table like a curious baby. He looked up expectantly at the bowl of cereal. Debbie giggled, holding her breakfast away from his smiling beak. Why was she leaving them?
Her parents laughed as they regarded their gray pet cockatiel. Her father sat down to put on his work boots.
"I hope you do find a job out there," her mother said.
Debbie left her car key and house key on her desk. Her friends' Boston and Arizona numbers were taped to her desk. She took one last look at the garden.
She hopped into her mother's truck. She would take Debbie to the bank where she would work until four o'clock closing time. Then she would come pick Debbie up with her suitcase and bring her to the train station. Ahead of them, a blue truck was parked on the side of the road. Her father's truck.
"What's he doing?" her mother cried.
Was it an accident? Her mother dropped her off in front of the bank. Then she drove off to find her father.
Cathy came smiling to the locked door and let Debbie inside of the bank. "My father's truck is stopped on the side of the road," she explained. She tried to peer out of the wide windows of the bank. "I hope it's not an accident."
Her mother walked past the windows of the closed bank, her grocery cart in front of her. When Debbie looked outside the windows again, her father's truck was gone.
"Are you looking forward to your vacation?" Jennifer said.
"I've been so busy, I haven't had even had time to think about it," Debbie said.
On her lunch hour, Debbie suddenly remembered to call her temporary employment agency. Although she was returning the call, the girl had to look her up on the computer.
"Your assignment ends May 7." She said. "You're back in our computer for availability."
"May seven? That's...today," Debbie said. She left the phone booth outside the bank where she had worked for the past five months and three weeks. She walked toward the door. Instead, she decided to walk past the door, this sunny day, and entered the adjacent drugstore. She bought lotion, razors, a travelling toothbrush.
"Did you say you're leaving?" John, the assistant manager at the drugstore asked. He stood at her supervisor's window.
"No," Debbie said slowly. "I said, I believe it."
Her supervisor said they hadn't gotten raises in three years and she believed it.
"You should look for work out there," Cathy said.
Debbie smiled. "We were roommates in New York," she recalled. "We both wanted to be reporters. We used to come home and complain about our office jobs."
"Well, maybe she can get you a job," Cathy said.
"She just got a promotion to editor of another newspaper," Debbie said of her former roommate in New York, moved back home to Phoenix.
"You should look for work out there. Maybe she can find a job for you. The bank is staying open now and you don't know where you're going to be. The bank is staying open!" Cathy's blue eyes were round with panic. They all knew she was hired as a temporary teller until the bank closed.
"I know." Debbie smiled slyly. Her temporary assignment was to be for six months or until the bank closed. For months, no one knew whether the bank would stay open, much to the hope of the loyal customers who had banked there all their lives.
The girls all looked at Debbie with her black stitched leather boots, black skirt, houndstooth blazer, and black sleeveless top with pearl necklace.
"That is a great outfit," Cathy said. "I used to be skinny like that."
Sweets, McDonald's, and the monumental event of bearing a child changed all of that.
They looked at her Western boots. "She's there," her boss, Betty said and Debbie smiled.
Elizabeth whispered to her. "Oh, no," Debbie said softly. Mac McAllister stood inside the lobby with his back to them. She surveyed his ugly neck. After hesitating for a few moments, he approached her window.
"The Astronomy Club is having a picnic tomorrow," he said.
"I won't be here. I'm getting out of this town tonight!" Debbie said.
"When will you be back? There will be another picnic on the Sunday..."
"I don't think you should make all these plans for me. I'm not sure when I'll be back," Debbie said abruptly.
"Oh. But you'll call me when you get back."
"I'm not going to call you," she said.
"Oh. Okay," he said.
"I don't know when I'll be back. I'm not trying to be mean, butI don't think you should be making all these plans for me."
"But you didn't get the job yet, right?"
"No. But I'm not sure when I'm coming back. Just let me go. Just let me go," she said, averting his face.
And Mac McAlister walked slowly out of the glass doors, still puzzled.
"Do you think I was too mean?" she asked Elizabeth.
"I would've been a lot meaner than that," the ever patient, soft spoken Elizabeth said matter-of-factly.
"They let me go," Debbie said to her. "I found out on my lunch hour. I called the temp agency. Today's my last day."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in surprise, but before she could say anything, Betty and Jennifer were upon her. They counted her cash. They added her wrok. They audited her cash box and took it from her. When she looked at Betty for a response, she looked away from Debbie. When Betty spoke, her sad voice sounded ready to crack slightly.
"Opportunity knocks," Elizabeth said as she watched them take away Debbie's cash box and prepare the way for her to leave.
"My mother's coming with my suitcase," Debbie said.
"Your mother's coming with your suitcase! Aren't you excited?" Cathy shouted.
"I need more cash!" Debbie said.
"If your train is coming at 4:47, you better get going," Betty said.
Debbie walked outside the door. "I may come back," she said. But her mother had arrived with the car and her suitcase.
"You mean you don't have a job?" she said.
"I'm leaving anyway. Now I can stay a little longer and look. The temp agency will have more jobs for me," Debbie said.
"I'm going to tell them you're doing really well out there and you sent your resume out there already," her mother vowed, angry at the bank where she had been a faithful customer for many years.
Debbie grabbed her suitcase, got out of the car, shouted "Happy Mother's Day," and walked into the New London train station. I won't be missing this place, she thought as she walked along the deserted pier and looked across the Thames River at the building of a former temporary assignment.
"I don't get it. Why do you have to leave at four on Friday?" Betty had demanded. Debbie told her she wanted to be on time. Betty still didn't get it.
"I have a train to catch," she said. Betty finally realized that Debbie was taking a train to Boston on Friday night in order to fly out of Boston early Saturday morning and that she was staying overnight at a friend's apartment.
"What time do you get into Boston?" she said.
